"There are more people at Keyhole Hot Springs than there used to be. The road goes further in than it used to. They want to put a power plant at Keyhole Falls. There's a whole new pumice mine on the Athelstan side. What would Randy Stoltmann think of this? What would John Clarke think of this? What, indeed, would Mr. Doolittle think of this? In the 1890s Stanley Smith and Mr. Doolittle traversed the whole Bridge-Lillooet complex, living off the land and shooting goats and ptarmigans for food. 'One suit will not withstand a journey such as this.' Nowadays you'd get busted by a game warden if you tried that shit, except that most of the game wardens have been fired. Our methods of interacting with the land have changed beyond recognition over the last hundred-odd years. It's worthwhile to remember that the First Nations saw this landscape not as unspoiled wilderness but as a place that had been intensely and intensively managed since the dawn of time, when Raven cracked the shell."
- posted by cjb @ 9:53 PM